310 
NATURE 
[NoveMBER 6, 1913 
ee tM 
that the defects of our present system make themselves 
manifest. You keep a child at school for eight or 
nine years, and just at the critical time when his 
natural aptitudes are taking their bent and his char- 
acter is forming his education is broken off, and the 
boy and the girl who might have done good service 
in some profession or skilled industry drops into idle- 
ness or loafing, or adds one to the millions of casual 
and unskilled labourers. I say with conviction that 
the first upward step must be the improvement of our 
intermediate education, because that is the branch in 
which we are most lacking. You may not always find 
a genius—a genius is rare—but remember that if you 
do find him you will have repaid yourselves more than 
a hundredfold. Remember the economic value of a 
great inventor covers the educational expenditure of a 
whole town. I think Sir Henry Bessemer was a 
fellow-townsman of yours here in Camberwell, and 
Sir Henry Bessemer’s chief invention, we know, was 
equal in productive power to the labours of a hundred 
thousand men. Now, that is why I say that we must 
be prepared for further expenditure if we are to get 
the economic equivalent for what we have spent 
already. We must be prepared as a country to foot 
the bill, just as the Government will be prepared to 
make the proposals to the country. The Government 
policy is a large policy, and I may say that it is our 
intention not only to increase the amount of the grant, 
but to change the manner of its distribution, so that 
of two areas equally efficient the poorer will receive 
the larger grant, and of two areas equally necessitous 
the more efficient will receive the larger grant.” 
A SUGGESTIVE paper was read by Mr. Cloudesley 
Brereton at a conference of employers of labour on 
October 28, in connection with the recent National 
Gas Congress and Exhibition., Mr. Brereton pointed 
out that although until recently education in England 
has busied itself far too little, upon the whole, with 
the problems of the work-a-day world, yet even the 
older English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge 
in actual practice have always been to a considerable 
extent technological institutions. Their work has 
been mainly, not so much the imparting of book 
knowledge, but of ‘tmancraft,” the art of handling 
men, gained through daily contact with their fellows. 
In so far as the studies of candidates for theology, 
medicine, and law are concerned, these Universities 
are to all intents and purposes purely technological 
colleges. At the present time in the older, and to a far 
greater extent in the younger, universities we find 
training in technique provided in many subjects, not 
merely in law, medicine, and theology, but also in 
engineering, applied chemistry, the textile industries, 
gas and electricity, and certain branches of commerce. 
Whatever the grade of educational institution may be 
the problem of suitable curricula can only be solved 
by first considering what will be the probable career 
of the pupil. The elementary school is already moving 
in the direction of first diagnosing the pupil’s future 
needs and then prescribing for him. Even the older 
universities and the public schools are showing signs 
of being affected by similar influences. Employers, in 
consequence of the increasing pressure of competition 
and the invasion of industry by science, are as vitally 
interested in the production of pupils of the right type 
as the educationist is, or ought to be. Mr. Cloudesley 
Brereton gave a valuable summary of the principal 
steps which have been taken by employers to foster 
the continued education of their employees, e.g. by the 
award of prizes for attendance and success at examina- 
tions, the payment or repayment of fees, making 
attendance at evening classes compulsory upon junior 
employees, meetings at works during the hours of 
employment, and the formation of advisory committees 
NO. 2297, VOL. 92] 
containing representatives of employers and workmen. 
Important educational results are accruing from such 
organised schemes of training as those at Sunderland 
for engineering apprentices, and at the Bournville 
works. With regard to the question of raising the 
age of attendance at school to sixteen or seventeen, 
he suggested that one great difficulty, apart from the 
cost, is the growing dissatisfaction with the mainly 
literary type of education, and the conviction that our 
“present system does not give value for the public 
‘money now granted. ; 
At the distribution of prizes to successful students 
of the City and Guilds Institute at the Mansion House 
on October 20, the President of the Board of Education 
delivered an address. Mr. Pease dealt with the ques- 
tion of a worthy university for London. He said that 
the Government, after careful consideration, has 
decided that the scheme set out in the report of the 
recent Royal Commission is calculated to produce a 
University of London worthy of the name. Every- 
thing possible is to be done to carry out the scheme 
with all reasonable dispatch. To this end a Depart- 
mental Committee has been appointed. The under- 
lying principles of the Commission’s scheme are to be 
regarded as accepted. Modifications in detail and 
machinery may be found desirable, but the funda- 
mental principles must be accepted if any advance is 
to be made now. If London shows that it is anxious 
and willing to have a reconstituted pce on 
the lines laid down in the report of the Royal Com- 
mission, the Government will play their part in supply- 
ing the money necessary. Continuing, Mr. Pease 
said :—-‘‘The whole history of the development of 
modern universities shows that the prime essential 
of success is local patriotism. Local patriotism means, 
of course, money, but it means a great deal more 
besides. It implies a belief in the necessity for a 
great university and in the immensity of the influence 
the university can exercise—an influence which, 
especially in the case of an Empire metropolis, must 
always extend far beyond the narrow limits of the 
area which the university primarily serves. Its 
functions will be Imperial, even international, as well 
as local. But without the active support and con- 
fidence of the locality no modern university can exist, 
let alone flourish. Acts of Parliament and State-aid 
cannot alone create a university.’’ In the case of the 
University of London, Mr. Pease laid it down that 
the principles on which any permanently satisfactory 
scheme must be based are simple :—(1) Educational 
and financial control of all the most important colleges 
to be in the hands of the University; (2) the creation 
of a University quarter by concentration of as much 
of the University work as possible, together with its 
administration, on a central site [the Imperial College 
must remain where it is]; (3) government of the 
University by a small Senate, predominantly lay, and 
not representative of special interests; (4) control of 
the teaching and examination in the hands of the 
teachers; (5) continuance of access to University 
examinations by external students. The place of the 
Imperial College in a reconstituted University is one 
of the first points the Departmental Committee pro- 
poses to investigate. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
CAMBRIDGE. 
Philosophical Society, October 27.—Prof. Hobson in 
the chair.—R. D. Kleeman; The dependence of the 
relative ionisation in various gases by B rays on their 
velocity, and its bearing on the ionisation produced 
by y rays.—N. P. McCleland: Note on a dynamical 
system illustrating fluorescence. 
